World War IIhttp://livingchurch.org/taxonomy/term/238/all
enRationing and Parish Lifehttp://livingchurch.org/rationing-and-parish-life
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><span style="font-variant: small-caps"><strong>From the Archives</strong></span></p>
<p>Edited by Richard J. Mammana, Jr.</p>
<p><em>A letter to the editor, an editorial, and two news articles from early 1942 describe the effects of wartime rationing on parish life in the Episcopal Church. Passenger-car manufacturing ended in February 1942, and production did not resume until the end of World War II. Tire rationing began on December 31, 1941. Rationing of both automobiles and tires ended on October 30, 1945. The Rev. Francis C. Lightbourn (</em><em>1908-91</em><em>) served as literary editor of TLC in the 1960s.</em></p>
<p><strong>Letters to the Editor<br />January 21, 1942, p. 2</strong><br />I have two small missions in two small Southern towns, 35 miles apart, where I have been trying slowly to teach the Catholic Faith. In A, where I live, the congregation are mostly elderly people who object to anything other than a late morning service. In B my congregation are college faculty and students, accustomed to an 8:30 said Eucharist every Sunday as the only service.</p>
<p>Tires are being rationed, and I do not know how long mine are going to last. Nor have the clergy yet been placed on the preferred list, along with doctors and others. My present service schedule cannot be maintained without use of my car, as neither bus nor train runs at the right time. If I alternate, my people will be sure to get the Sundays mixed. A 5:45 or 6 a.m. celebration at A would be all right with me, and I could make bus connections for the 8:30 parish Eucharist at B. But who except my wife would come at that hour?</p>
<p>I have considered the matter from every possible angle, lining up on paper every conceivable arrangement, with advantages and disadvantages of each. The inescapable conclusion is that a 10 o’clock Eucharist at A and a 4 o’clock Eucharist at B <em>alone will enable a majority of both congregations to take part in Eucharistic worship every Sunday</em>. As a Catholic, I naturally hesitate about afternoon Communions. But surely it is better to have the Blessed Sacrament at any time than not at all. And why should people be deprived of the Lord’s own service which they have learned to render well and to sing (though with no choir and a congregation of seldom more than 10), and be given a man-made form of worship never intended as steady diet for general use?</p>
<p>… I shall be most grateful for comments and suggestions, pro and con, communicated either through these columns or to me personally; for I know that I am not the only priest who will sooner or later be faced with the same problem.</p>
<p><em>(The Rev.) F.C. Lighbtourn.</em><br />Mt. Sterling, [Kentucky]</p>
<p><strong>Editorial</strong><br /><strong>Tires and the Clergy<br />January 21, 1942, p. 11</strong><br />The Church and its clergy are entirely willing to undergo, with the general population, any reasonable restrictions and sacrifices that may be necessary for the winning of the war. But the Church must also carry on its work, and has a right to expect the ready coöperation of a government that is waging a war in the name of Christian principles.</p>
<p>The strict rationing of new tires, forbidding entirely their purchase for ordinary uses, is a case in point. The priority accorded to physicians who use their cars principally for the exercise of their profession is a wise provision. The same priority should be given to clergymen, when they use their cars primarily for the exercise of their profession. Surely the ministry to souls is at least as important as the ministry to bodies, as the government itself proclaims when it asks the people to place their faith in the things of the spirit above their personal safety.</p>
<p>A letter in our correspondence columns this week indicates how the ministry of one priest is curtailed by inability to buy new tires. The government will probably not be interested in the technicalities of fasting Communion, or the question of afternoon celebrations, and the Bishop is the proper person to rule on this phase of the Church’s discipline. But it is clear that, if the tire restrictions are not relaxed or priority given to clergymen who must use their cars to reach distant missions or isolated families, the work of the Church will be greatly hindered, particularly in the “great open spaces” of the West.</p>
<p>We respectfully call this situation to the attention of the proper authorities in Washington, and ask that the clergy be given proper priority for the purchases of new tires in cases where it is necessary to the exercise of their ministry in service to the people committed to their charge.</p>
<p><strong>News<br />Clergy Allowed Priority on Tire Purchases<br />January 28, 1942, p. 10</strong><br />Clergymen will be allowed priority on the purchase of new tires on the same basis as doctors, according to a new ruling announced January 17 by Leon Henderson, price administrator. Apologizing to the nation’s clergy for their omission from the original order, Mr. Henderson stated that clergymen of all denominations who use their cars in carrying out their religious duties would be permitted to buy new tires.</p>
<p>“As amended,” said Mr. Henderson, “the tire order will place the needs of clergy on a par with those of doctors, nurses, and other occupations or professions whose services are essential to public health and safety.”</p>
<p>In order to be eligible for the purchase of new tires, clergymen must certify to their local tire rationing boards that they actually need their cars for the effective carrying out of their ministerial duties.</p>
<p><strong>“Practicing” Clergymen to Get Priorities on Autos<br />March 11, 1942, p. 5</strong><br />Under revised rationing regulations issued by Price Administrator Leon Henderson, “practicing” clergymen will be permitted to purchase new automobiles as well as new tires and tubes.</p>
<p>The auto rationing order, scheduled to go into effect on March 2d, states that “regular practicing ministers of a religious faith” are eligible to receive automobiles on the same basis as professional men.</p>
<p>Regulations governing the rationing of tires to clergymen follow a policy laid down several weeks ago by the office of the Price Administrator.</p>
<p>According to rationing officials, it must not be assumed that all clergymen asking for new tires are to be permitted to have them. Clergymen, they point out, are subject to the same requirements now being applied to physicians, in that they must show, among other things, that they absolutely require new tires for the performance of their duties, and that their old tires are no longer safe.</p>
<p><em>Richard J. Mammana, Jr., is TLC’s archivist.</em></p>
<p><em>Image: </em><em>A chart shows a schedule for food rationing during World War II. Image from </em>The British People at War <em>(Odhams Press Ltd., published in the 1940s). • </em><em>L</em><em>icensed under Creative Commons</em></p>
<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"><a href="https://www.scribd.com/doc/251099377/Rationing-and-Parish-Life" style="text-decoration: underline;" title="View Rationing and Parish Life on Scribd">Rationing and Parish Life</a></p>
<p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" data-auto-height="false" frameborder="0" height="600" id="doc_79309" scrolling="no" src="https://www.scribd.com/embeds/251099377/content?start_page=1&amp;view_mode=scroll&amp;show_recommendations=true" width="100%"></iframe></p>
<p><em>TLC on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/livingchurchmag">Facebook</a> </em>¶<em> TLC on <a href="https://twitter.com/CovenantTLC">Twitter</a> </em>¶<em> TLC’s <a href="http://livingchurch.org/rss.xml">feed</a> </em>¶<em> TLC’s weblog, <a href="http://livingchurch.org/covenant/">Covenant</a> </em>¶<em> <a href="https://sub.livingchurch.org/sub/?p=LCM&amp;f=paid">Subscribe</a></em></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/archives" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">from the archives</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/world-war-ii" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">World War II</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/american-life" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">American life</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categories-top field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Categories:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/lead-story" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lead Story</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/essays-reviews" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Essays &amp; Reviews</a></div></div></div>Sat, 27 Dec 2014 10:25:48 +0000Web Editor1868 at http://livingchurch.orgD-Day Remembrance Prayerhttp://livingchurch.org/d-day-remembrance-prayer
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><a href="http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/5336/d-day-anniversary-a-prayer-of-remembrance-" style="line-height: 1.538em;">From the Archbishop of Canterbury</a></p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">Almighty and eternal God,</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">from whose love in Christ we cannot be parted, either by death or life:</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">hear our prayers and thanksgivings</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">for all whom we remember this day;</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">fulfill in them the purpose of your love; and bring us all, with them, to your eternal joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 40px;">Amen.</p>
<p>Image by Chief Photographer’s Mate (CPHoM) Robert F. Sargent, via <a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Into_the_Jaws_of_Death_23-0455M_edit.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/world-war-ii" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">World War II</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/sacrifice" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">sacrifice</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categories-top field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Categories:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/lead-story" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lead Story</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/features" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Features</a></div></div></div>Fri, 06 Jun 2014 19:39:56 +0000Web Editor1443 at http://livingchurch.orgThe Dead of World War IIhttp://livingchurch.org/dead-world-war-ii
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">By Gary G. Yerkey</span></p>
<p>When President Obama visits Colleville-sur-Mer, France, on June 6 to participate in ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of D-Day, he will see a rich country endowed with exceptional natural beauty. But he will also see a sea of white crosses marking the graves of thousands of American soldiers who died liberating the European continent from Nazi tyranny.</p>
<p>The president will see the crosses, in particular, during a stop at the <a href="http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/normandy-american-cemetery">Normandy American Cemetery</a>, located on a bluff on the English Channel overlooking Omaha Beach, where U.S. troops landed on the morning of June 6, 1944.</p>
<p>Visiting the cemetery — as I did in mid-May — it is easy to be numbed by the numbers. It is the final resting place of 9,387 people who were killed in the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach, as well as Utah Beach, just to the west, and in the ensuing Allied military campaign across France.</p>
<p>It is also one of 25 permanent American burial grounds on foreign soil, according to the <a href="http://www.abmc.gov/">American Battle Monuments Commission</a>, which administers, operates and maintains the sites. A total of 124,901 American war dead have been interred in the cemeteries, including 93,236 who died in World War II.</p>
<p>The cemetery covers 172.5 acres. It is the most visited American military cemetery on foreign soil, receiving about a million visitors a year.</p>
<p>Another site, the <a href="http://www.abmc.gov/cemeteries-memorials/europe/brittany-american-cemetery">Brittany American Cemetery</a>, near the village of St. James 60 miles to the southwest, covers 28 acres and contains the remains of 4,410 war dead, including 97 “known but to God.”</p>
<p>Inside the numbers are the lives and stories of once-vibrant individuals who were sons, husbands, friends, and colleagues.</p>
<p>At the Normandy American Cemetery, for instance, you find the graves of the well-known and well-connected, like Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair, who was killed by friendly fire on July 25, 1944, near Saint-Lô. He was 61 when he died and was one of the highest-ranking American officers to be killed in World War II.</p>
<p>There is also the grave of Theodore Roosevelt. Jr., eldest son of the 26th President of the United States. On D-Day, he led the U.S. assault on Utah Beach and was the only American general to land by sea with the first wave of troops. At 56, he was the oldest man to participate in the invasion. Just over a month after D-Day, however, he suffered a heart attack at his headquarters near Sainte-Mère-Église and died.</p>
<p>At the Brittany American Cemetery you find the grave of Capt. John W. Schwer, an Army chaplain. For three years, he served as rector of <a href="http://www.stbarnabasdenton.org/">St. Barnabas Church</a> in Denton, Texas, then became acting rector at the <a href="http://cotgs.org/">Church of the Good Shepherd</a> in Corpus Christi, before enlisting in the Army in 1943 and attending Chaplains Training School at Harvard University. On August 3, 1944, he was reported missing, along with his driver, Tech Sgt. Forrest R. Nelson, in the vicinity of Huelgoat, France. It was later learned that they had been ambushed and that Schwer had been killed and Nelson taken prisoner.</p>
<p>Also buried at the Brittany American Cemetery is Col. Wellborn B. Griffith, Jr., a West Point graduate who saved <a href="http://www.cathedrale-chartres.org/en/,143.html">Chartres Cathedral</a> from serious damage and possible destruction. On August 16, 1944, he entered the city with an enlisted soldier to determine the exact location of units of the 7th Armored Division and saw that gunfire was being directed at the cathedral. But after searching the building and finding no enemy forces, he ordered the U.S. troops to cease fire. Later that day, he was killed by enemy machine-gun fire in the vicinity of nearby Lèves, where a small park in the city has been named in his honor.</p>
<p>At the cemetery, only two civilians are interred: Thomas S. Treanor, a correspondent for the <em>Los Angeles Times</em>, and an unidentified member of the Civilian Work Force.</p>
<p>After covering the war in North Africa, Italy, China, and Burma, Treanor landed with U.S. troops at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, then covered Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., advancing with the Third U.S. Army east through France toward Paris for the next two months. On August 18, while Treanor traveled to the front with two other reporters, the Jeep in which he was riding was run over by an American tank near Chartres. He died the next day after 10 hours of surgery at an Army evacuation hospital. His last story for the newspaper was an account of the battle for Chartres and the actions of Col. Griffith.</p>
<p>Not far from Omaha Beach is a burial ground less well-known to Americans: a German cemetery containing the remains of more than 21,000 German soldiers and other military personnel who were killed at Omaha Beach and other locations in France. It is maintained by the German War Graves Commission, which oversees 832 military cemeteries in 45 countries, with about 2.6 million dead. The commission also maintains an online service for locating the grave of a German soldier or determining the fate of a missing member of the German military.</p>
<p>For an American, visiting the cemetery at La Cambe can be a somewhat unsettling experience. But it is tastefully designed and well-maintained, with an exhibition at the entrance underscoring the horrors of war and the yearning for peace. Each grave is marked with a simple black stone cross bearing the name of the fallen soldier. Some of them simply contain the words <em>Eine Deutsche Soldate</em>.</p>
<p>Walter Benjamin, assistant superintendent of the Brittany American Cemetery, bristles when a visitor suggests that he has a great job, that it must be interesting to come to work every day. “It’s not a job,” Benjamin, a former soldier, replies. “It’s a calling.”</p>
<p><em>Image: A cross marking the grave of war correspondent Thomas Treanor is among the thousands at <span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Brittany American Cemetery. Gary Yerkey photo.</span></em></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/memorial-day" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Memorial Day</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/d-day" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">D-Day</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/world-war-ii" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">World War II</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/war-dead" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">war dead</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categories-top field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Categories:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/lead-story" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lead Story</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/news" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">News</a></div></div></div>Mon, 26 May 2014 16:01:02 +0000Web Editor1415 at http://livingchurch.orgChurch vs. Reichhttp://livingchurch.org/church-vs-reich
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded"><p>By Leander Harding</p>
<p><em><a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=mzYAAAAAMAAJ&amp;q=man%27s+disorder+and+God%27s+design&amp;dq=man%27s+disorder+and+God%27s+design&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=p35aT-XaIer40gGB0PiHCA&amp;ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA">Man’s Disorder and God’s Design</a></em>, published by Harper and Brothers in 1948, is a remarkable collection of essays prepared for the first assembly of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam. The authors include some of the most respected theological voices of the 20th century: Karl Barth, H. Richard Niebuhr, George Florovsky, Gustaf Aulén, and Lesslie Newbigin. Sober reflection on what European churches learned from Nazi persecution and the war years is a dominant theme in the book.</p>
<p>A powerful section, “The Shame and the Glory of the Church,” provides one of the most moving accounts of Church life which I have ever read, written by Edmund Schlink, who was a professor of systematic theology at Heidelberg. This essay on the life of the Church under Hitler speaks, as the editors say, “for the Church upon whom fell the first and the hardest part of the struggle to manifest God’s glory amidst man’s disorder” (p. 77).</p>
<p>Schlink reminds us that at first the persecution of the Church was camouflaged as “positive Christianity,” which claimed through the use of quotations from the Bible to be fulfilling God’s commandments: “They thus built up an enormous propaganda-machine, which resulted in a general inflation of values, because it sanctified anything it wanted to, so that finally nothing remained sacred” (p. 98). Only then did the full persecution come. The Nazis shut down the Church’s influence on public life, banned the printing of Bibles and hymnbooks, prohibited large Church assemblies, and pressured men and young people to join the party. Theological faculties atrophied, hundreds of evangelical pastors and Roman Catholic priests were sent to the camps, some to suffer martyrdom, and “even the women and children who went to church were watched” (p. 98).</p>
<p>Schlink reports that there was a great falling-off among Christians. Many people became ashamed of the name of Christ and stopped attending church. Some preferred the neo-pagan ceremonies offered by the state to baptism and marriage in the Church. “Families were torn asunder: children denounced their parents, husbands opposed their wives, brothers and sisters took opposite sides in the cleavage between faith and error. Love grew cold in many hearts. Its place was taken by delusions and hardness of heart” (p. 98). The defections reached into the clergy: “Many became preachers of the anti-Christian myth and entered the service of the Nazis to replace the loyal pastors and church leaders that had been deprived of office. Many became false teachers and then persecutors of the Church” (p. 98).</p>
<p>For Schlink, even more stunning than the apostasy was “the way in which it was usually taken for granted with an easy conscience. When the Nazi philosophy began to influence Christians, many of them did not even notice that this Nazi talk about ‘the Almighty’ and His ‘providence’ had nothing to do with the Living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that it was directly opposed to Him. … It became evident that people were not all that clear about Christian teaching. In many churches, even before the Nazi regime, preaching had become an arbitrary religious explanation of personal destiny and world events. Otherwise, when the crucial moment came, it would have been impossible for a man of our own time to gain such an ascendancy and for him, with his personal philosophy, to become the object of such widespread faith and hope” (p. 99).</p>
<p>The German Church’s accommodation of the Nazi regime reveals an appalling failure of basic Christian preaching and teaching. In Schlink’s understanding the failure of the churches was not so much caused by the persecution as revealed by it. “The forces outside the church showed up what was real in the life of these churches, and what was only an empty shell” (p. 100).</p>
<p>By God’s grace an astonishing renewal of the Church occurred as well. “The renewal began when the Church recognized the enemy’s attack as the hand of God … and when resistance to injustice became at the same time an act of repentance and of submission to the mighty hand of God” (p. 100). As the contrast with anti-Christian propaganda became more intense “the Church’s ears were re-opened to the Word of God. … But at the same time God’s Word challenged us, questioned the reality of our own religion, and forced us to recognize God simply and solely in His Word. Under the attack of neo-paganism, but especially through the power of God’s Word, its promises, and its demands, our usual attempts to see God’s revelation in other historical events and forms, ideas and words, save in the historic event of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, completely broke down. … Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, was recognized and acclaimed afresh as the sole Word of God” (p. 100).</p>
<p>One consequence of this sifting was the emergence of a strong Bible movement in the German Church carrying through into the post-war years. There also emerged a new feeling for the sacraments of the Church. Before the war, Communion services were infrequent and the number of communicants small. “People gathered afresh around the sacraments. The number of communion services and communicants increased. In the midst of all the tribulation and distress there awakened a new longing for the concrete, personal experience of receiving the body and the blood of the Incarnate Son of God Who has given Himself for us. … These communion services echoed the joy of the early Christians, to whom the body and blood of Christ were objects of the greatest joy and praise” (p. 101).</p>
<p>There were other signs of renewal. Schlink reports that under the persecution there emerged a great sense that the Church was the fellowship of those who confess and bear witness to the lordship of Christ. The term <em>brother</em> came very naturally into common use again as Christians discovered their solidarity across denominational lines. The liturgy was reshaped so that common prayers for those exiled and imprisoned were a more prominent feature. There was greater attentiveness to saying the creeds and ancient prayers which expressed the identification of the people with the Church of the ages. “Through these prayers we realized that across all distances and even across the war-fronts, we were <em>one </em>people with the worshippers in all nations” (p. 102).</p>
<p>The clergy experienced renewal. There was a new focus on the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments as the chief work of the clergy, “which takes precedence over all other tasks. But it became especially clear that the Church cannot be led by anything but the voice of the Good Shepherd, as preached in the Word of God” (p. 102). There was a renewal in lay ministry. “Many elders then began to understand their task in a new way as that of watchmen. Many who had only listened to the Word before, now came forward to read to the congregation, or to give their own exposition of a passage of scripture. Many, who had never thought of doing so before, accompanied bereaved persons to the cemetery, so that the body should not be laid in the earth without a reading from scripture and a prayer. In addition to the old office of deacon, new duties were assumed; readers, catechists, both men and women, undertook the care of the poor and pastoral work, while young people taught the children” (p. 103). There was a new recognition that ordinary people in the daily work in factory, school and the military were presented with both the challenge and peril of Christian ministry and witness. “Hesitatingly, but with growing confidence, the Church in the Third Reich began to proclaim that in every sphere of life we owe obedience to God in Christ, proclaiming its message in the face of the world and helping the persecuted” (p. 104).</p>
<p>And then comes the stunning conclusion to Professor Schlink’s report. “All of this proved that the Church can only help, in the middle of the disorder of the world, by really being the Church. Its most important duty to the world consists in allowing itself to be re-made by the Word of God. When the Church derives its life solely from the Word of God made flesh, the witness of that word within the Church is bound to have effect in saving and bringing order into the world around. But if the Church bears witness to something other than this Lord, however well intentioned its advice, warning, help and sacrifice may be, it will only increase the disorder of the world” (p. 104).</p>
<p>In a time when the disorder of humankind asserts itself both in the Church and the world and the Church is again being sifted and sorted, albeit not as fiercely as under the Nazis, what can we say upon hearing this testimony of the German Church to us except <em>amen</em> and <em>please God grant us their repentance and renewal.</em></p>
<p><em>The Rev. <a href="http://www.tsm.edu/faculty_profiles/the_rev_dr_leander_harding">Leander S. Harding</a> is dean of church relations and seminary advancement and associate professor of pastoral theology at <a href="http://www.tsm.edu/">Trinity School for Ministry</a>.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/84742629/Church-vs-Reich" style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;" title="View Church vs Reich on Scribd">Church vs Reich</a></p>
<iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" data-aspect-ratio="0.758364312267658" data-auto-height="true" id="doc_42409" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/84742629/content?start_page=1&amp;view_mode=list&amp;access_key=key-hmdpn2za9r0cg62ushx" frameborder="0" height="600" scrolling="no" width="100%"></iframe>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/holocaust" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Holocaust</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/german-church" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">German church</a></div><div class="field-item even" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/resistance" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Resistance</a></div><div class="field-item odd" rel="dc:subject"><a href="/world-war-ii" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">World War II</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categories-top field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Categories:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/lead-story" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Lead Story</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/essays-reviews" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Essays &amp; Reviews</a></div></div></div>Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:27:22 +0000Douglas LeBlanc208 at http://livingchurch.org